The Word of God and you

Words make up sentences, which make up paragraphs, which make up chapters, which make up books, which make up the Bible. When we set down to study God's word we must understand this truism. “The meaning of the words depends on their context within the sentence, and the meaning of the sentence depends on the words within it.”

When we read the Bible we are dealing with a different time, place and culture, which we are unfamiliar with. Therefore we may miss the intent of the writer or worse read our own meaning into the text. We have all done it and we have all seen it done. Oft times for what is considered the best of intentions, but is it right? No.

The word of God is to be handled with kids gloves, so to speak. We are not to bend or twist it into various shapes so that it can be used to prove what we want it to say. Man has become adept at taking verses out of context, changing the meaning of words and in some cases adding their own meaning to them. And to what end? They would say to add clarity, but in reality all it has done is confuse.

When we have preachers, teachers, expositors or what have you miss using and abusing scripture. Shame on them. When we, as disciples of Jesus Christ, just accept what we are being told and do not take the time and/or make the effort to check it for ourselves. Then shame on us.

What Calvin or Arminius or any other men say is not, repeat not, to be treated as God breathed scripture. Proof texts are only proof of your ideas or theirs. If you build your faith upon proof texts, as some seem to have done, then you have a very poor foundation. As an example, if you do a search for “there is no God” in the NASB you will find it 14 times. Now we have bible proof that God does not exist. Do you get my point?

More times than I care to count I have had people say “this is what so and so says” but rarely have I heard “this is what I found in my studies”.

The word of God is such a precious gift, do not leave it to someone else to tell you what it means. Roll up your sleeves and dig in. Get your hands dirty as you dig out the gems of God's word for yourself.